Photos: Turnbull’s Northern Photography
IROQUOIS FALLS, Ont. – Tyler Patterson scored three times, including collecting the game-winner, to help pace the Hearst Lumberjacks to a 6-2 win over the Iroquois Falls Storm in a Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League meeting Thursday at Jus Jordan Arena.
The lone tally of the opening 20 minutes came in the latter stages of the season Hearst’s William Pâquet led a rush into the Iroquois Falls zone and set-up Maddoc Newton going to the net where he put his chance over the blocker of Storm starter Connor Dunham-Fox at 17:14.
Going up by a pair, early in the middle session, the Lumberjacks’ Patterson took a cross-ice feed from Mathieu Comeau and snapped it in short side.
It was more from visitors at 6:22 after Comeau collected a turnover and put the puck in front that was steered in by Patterson for his fourth multi-marker game of the season, on a night where he also extended a point streak to six in succession.
The Hearst power play then contributed with goals 45 seconds apart to break it open.
Jack Nolan backhanded the initial man advantage effort put Dunham-Fox after the Iroquois Falls netminder made a couple of point-blank stops prior to that.
Up a skater once more, Liam Boswell made 5-0 at 14:46 as he cranked a rising blast from the top of the circles.
Patterson’s big night continued deep into the third when he took his time on the right side and patiently sizzled a wrister past a screened Dunham-Fox to cap off his three-goal night, on his club’s third extra-man marker of the evening.
The Storm did answer late to snap the shutout bid of the Lumberjacks’ Tristan Boileau with 1:54 to go off a nice individual effort by Andre Cho as he corralled a loose puck at centre, that darted into Hearst territory, made a power move around a defender, then cut back in and lifted his chance high into the top left-hand corner.
Cho then worked some more magic as he wheeled through a couple of Hearst players before firing one under the glove of Boileau.
That would be it however offensively as the guests skated away with the road triumph.
With the result, the Lumberjacks move to 7-8-1-1 on the season while the Storm fell to 5-13-0-0 with the loss.
The two clubs will now head to Hearst to wrap-up a home-and-home Friday in a 7 p.m. start at Claude Larose Recreation Centre and on FLOHockey.tv.
